


Far from the Bewildering Crowd

by misura



Category: Jurassic Park III (2001)
Genre: Community: smallfandomfest, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-02
Updated: 2015-06-02
Packaged: 2018-04-02 12:42:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4060426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alan discovers crowdfunding. Among other things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Far from the Bewildering Crowd

**Author's Note:**

  * For [seraphina_snape](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraphina_snape/gifts).



"You like him," Ellie said, "I can tell."

"What are we, in high school?" Alan asked. "Sure, I like him. He's a likeable young man. That's not what you mean though, and we both know it."

"So?" she said. Honest-to-God wriggling her eyebrows.

"So he's my student and initiating any sort of relationship would be highly inappropriate on my part." Alan considered. "On his, too, of course, only - "

"Only more understandable, given your incredibly charming personality and hot body?"

"I was going to say I considered that particular scenario a good deal less likely," Alan said.

"Oh, _Alan_ ," Ellie said, giving him a look Alan couldn't quite decipher. He was fairly sure he got the general gist of it, though.

"Anyway, I have far more pressing matters on my mind at the moment."

"Money before love, huh?" Ellie's grin was not lacking in sympathy; she knew as well as anyone how hard it was to get people to pony up cold, hard cash for something that wouldn't actually benefit them directly, in a concrete, everyday sort of way.

"I suppose you could put it that way, yes."

 

Before they'd left for the island, they'd had enough funding left for four months. The rescue had been free - which had been a relief to hear, even if Alan'd have gladly handed over the rest of his funding and considered it money well spent.

As he'd told Billy once, those fossils weren't going to go anywhere. If not them, then sooner or later, someone else would get around to them. (Probably later, given people's general attitude towards scientific discovery versus lab-growing actual-but-not-really dinosaurs.)

"That bad, huh?"

Alan considered mentioning the steepness of hospital bills for all of half a second. "Well, it's not great. Still, looks like we're good for at least another month."

Billy leaned against a table. The top button of his shirt was undone, which was nothing new. He looked healthy - a bit more tanned than most young people his age, perhaps, but then, he did spend a good deal of his time in the outdoors.

"And after that?"

"After that, we'll either pack it in and go home, or we'll have somehow acquired the funding to stay another month."

Billy sighed. "I like being here. With you."

"As opposed to being with me on an island full of dinosaurs trying to eat you?" Billy grimaced. Alan managed not to flinch. Some bad memories there, probably; he should have known better than to bring it up so casually. "Sorry."

"Well, hey, if there's anything I can do to help keep us funded, just say the word."

Alan wondered why his mind immediately jumped to an image of Billy posing for a photograph, 'tastefully clothed', as the saying went, which was to say: with only the nitty gritty details left to the imagination. Granted, _he'd_ pay good money for that. Still, hardly realistic.

"I don't think so," he said, "but thanks anyway."

Billy nodded at him cheerfully and brushed past him to grab a fresh toothbrush off the desk.

Alan had never considered the faint smell of sand, sweat and sun lotion sexy before.

 

"Crowdfunding," Ellie said. Something was banging in the background - pans, maybe. Drums, possibly, although that seemed unlikely. "It's all the rage nowadays."

"Well, as long as it's hip," Alan said. He'd called her after getting about six hundred dollars in donations from a bunch of complete strangers. Their names had not indicated any great interest in scientific discovery to him - someone who called himself LokiLovesThor2541 was hardly likely to be interested in the diet of the _cantaristes merianes_.

"It's money, Alan. You need money."

Never a good sign when a woman started talking to you in the same tone of voice she used to address her four-year-old son. "We do need money. I'm grateful. A little surprised, but grateful."

"Well, it's a quid pro quo thing, you know."

Alan managed not to yell. Or sigh. "What's the quo?"

"Nothing too bad - just snap some pictures of you and Billy and the guys at work."

It wasn't anything unreasonable. It still irked him, though. "Should I tell him to take his shirt off first?"

"Jealous?" Ellie asked. He could practically _hear_ her grin.

"Not even close. Thanks, Ellie. I mean it. You're a life-saver." Not with this particular scheme, he felt, but the rest of the time, yes. He could play along with this for a while, let it bleed to death.

She rattled off an e-mail address to send the pictures to - apparently, she didn't trust him to find the time to get them on-line himself, before she broke the connection, claiming a kitchen emergency.

 

Over the course of the next two weeks, Alan came to dread the sound of the camera. He'd ended up giving the damn thing to Billy, figuring it was just about the perfect solution to a thorny problem he'd prefer not to dwell on for too long.

"There's two people working on digging out an enormous skull using toothbrushes," he said, eyes closed. "I'd think they'd make for far better copy than me, taking a well-earned break."

"Like it or not, you're kind of famous. People like pictures of famous people."

"Especially when those famous people are looking ridiculous?" Alan opened his eyes and sat up. He'd been going over the financials again last night - as things stood right now, they had money for another five months, at least, and that was assuming the donations would dry up overnight.

Billy shrugged. "I thought you looked kind of cute, really. Human."

"It's a little early in the day for that kind of flattery, don't you think?" _Cute._ What a dreadful adjective to have applied to you by the object of your far-from-platonic desires.

"Hey, you want to snap one of me?"

"And so the truth emerges." Alan sighed as he accepted the camera. It had video capacity, too, he noticed. Delightful.

Billy struck a pose that Alan determinedly classified as 'silly' rather than 'sexy'.

Alan dutifully pressed the right buttons, wishing he'd been able to locate a wrong one before Billy'd accepted it back. Call him jealous; some things, mankind was simply not meant to see.

 

"We're out of shampoo."

Alan stared. He dreamt often, and usually of less than pleasant things. A dripping wet, mostly naked Billy had not been featured thus far.

"Alan?" Billy frowned and came a bit closer.

"You're wet," Alan said. Sounding like an idiot, he thought. Feeling like one, too.

"I was in the shower," Billy said. "That's when I discovered - "

"We're not out of shampoo. We can't be. I checked our supplies just last week."

Billy made a face. "I can't walk all the way to the supply tent like this. Can't I borrow yours or something? You got shampoo here, right?"

"I - yes. Probably. Somewhere."

"Cool."

Alan considered. He did not, at this exact moment, recall where he'd last seen his bottle of shampoo. He might get out of bed to look for it, but, well. One liked to think well of oneself, but that did not mean one ought to go around showing one's barely dressed self to one's students.

"I think it's in my bag somewhere." He gestured vaguely.

Billy bent over to take a closer look at the bag in question. The view was ... interesting.

Alan closed his eyes and tried to tell himself he was just dreaming. Besides, he wasn't the kind of shallow guy to lust after someone for their body.

 

"If these people are going to offer us a small fortune to go somewhere with them - _anywhere_ with them, we're leaving," Alan said. "I don't care if they just want us to take their kids to Disneyland or something - we're not going."

Billy grinned. "I always kind of wanted to go some time."

"Really?" Alan blinked. "Doesn't seem like you, somehow."

Billy shrugged. "There's plenty of things you don't know about me, Alan. Guy's gotta have a few secrets, right? To preserve that air of mystery?"

Alan snorted. "I think you mean 'youthful idiocy'. Incidentally, our potential new backers seem rather late. To the point where I'm wondering if they're going to show at all."

"Probably not, given that I made them up," Billy said.

Alan counted to five. Slowly. "You made them up."

Billy leaned back, entirely relaxed. Three buttons on his shirt were undone, which seemed to indicate he'd dressed rather sloppily this morning. "I just thought it'd be nice to have dinner together."

"What, like a date or something?" Alan scowled. The idea was fantastically attractive.

"Yeah," Billy said. "Exactly like a date." He looked at Alan with all the sincerity of a young idiot.

Alan swallowed. The right thing, the _ethical_ thing to do would be to get up and leave now. Maybe make a few calls to a couple of colleagues, get someone to take Billy off his hands.

"Next time, ask. And be ready to pay your own half of the bill."

Billy beamed at him. "Sure thing."

 

_epilogue_

Alan stared at the number on his screen. It didn't change - or actually, it _did_ change, but not to anything easier to believe.

"Ellie."

"Hey," she said, sounding entirely too cheerful. "Congratulations. That's a _lot_ of funding."

His head hurt. "What did you do?" Wrong question, probably. "What did you tell people?"

"Don't worry, I took out all the really embarrassing bits," she said. "And I asked Billy if he was okay with it, first, which he was, so really - "

"You didn't ask _me_." He'd googled himself. He'd never done so before, mostly because he didn't really care what people wrote about him, but it had seemed smart to do so now.

"Well, you would've just said no," Ellie said. "I know you, Alan."

"Better to ask forgiveness after the fact than permission aforehand?"

"I'm not apologizing. Do you hear me apologizing?"

"You should be," Alan said.

"Thanks to me, you got a superhot boyfriend and all the funding you could want. You're welcome."

Alan stared at the clip titled _Wet and Naked Tent Invasion (rated PG)_. Then he looked at the comments. "I'm not having a dinosaur themed wedding reception. And I'm _definitely_ not going to propose in raptor-speech - whatever that might be."

"You know what that is," Ellie said. "You practically invented it. Well, discovered it, anyway."

"Only in the same way Columbus discovered America," Alan said.

She laughed. "Go and tell your boyfriend the good news. If you pick the right time and place, you might even get lucky."


End file.
